It’s three years since we’ve last seen Sledgehammer Games’ Michael Condrey. With three different studios working in turn on each new Call Of Duty, we have to wait till the cycle is complete to see the same faces again. And it’s not since 2014’s Advanced Warfare that we’ve had a chance to speak to him. But while Advanced Warfare was set in the near future, with all manner of sci-fi weapons and equipment, this year’s new Call Of Duty couldn’t be more different…

We’ve already described our hands-on with WWII’s multiplayer, but as Condrey points out, the three different modes in Call Of Duty are almost separate games in themselves. There’s been a lot of talk about the multiplayer not including swastikas and having an unrealistically diverse range of Axis soldiers, but Sledgehammer never intended for it to be a realistic portrayal of the war. Instead, they’re keeping all that for the story campaign.

There’s been no hands-on yet for the story mode, but we were able to watch a 20-minute section of one of the missions, that seemed to give a good indication of what Sledgehammer is aiming for. It involved an assault on a church in France, following the D-Day landings. Just as intended, this immediately recalls the very earliest games in the franchise, when Call Of Duty was all about being as realistic as possible and replicating the full sensory overload of real world warfare.

Call Of Duty: WWII – the story and multiplayer modes are very different

How difficult the game may or may not be we couldn’t tell, but the stage starts with the American forces badly outnumbered and having to rely on each other to provide extra ammo and health. WWII does not feature a recharging health system, so if you can’t pick up medikits as you go, or get them from allies, you aren’t going to get any better.

We’re sure the demo was carefully stage-managed to look as impressive as possible, but that didn’t seem a difficult task given the hugely impressive graphics and great attention to detail. The real question though is how much the new game still relies on the Michael Bay style bombast of the newer Call Of Duty titles, and it does seem clear that WWII is a combination of both the new and old approaches.

Battling Nazi reinforcements and carefully whittling down their forces all seems very authentic, but upon entering the church you’re suddenly greeted with flamethrower units that essentially act as mid-level bosses. Not that their presence is necessarily unrealistic, but when a team-mate suddenly gets their head blown off in shockingly gory fashion it’s clear that the game is trying to strike a balance between realism and cinematic spectacle.

The level ends with the bell mechanism falling loose and a sequence of simple QTE events that are needed to avoid it, but as controversial as that may seem to some it all appeared to work in context. And especially after talking to Condrey about the wider aims for the game, we can’t wait to play the full thing when it’s released later this year.

(Condrey attempts to great us with a hug, which ends up with us coming over pathetically British and confused at the unexpectedly physical social interaction.)

MC: [laughs] So how’s your show going?

GC: Pretty well, I think. Up till then.

MC: [laughs]

GC: I was worried, with the public here, that it’d be hard to get around, but it’s been fine. There’s less cosplay than I expected though. I can only assume they were told not to do it.

MC: That’s a good point, I hadn’t thought of that. I think it’s great to have fans here, but I think they certainly need to work on the logistics of making sure everyone can get in to see things okay.

GC: Now, I often wonder with sequels, whether they push developers into making them unwillingly. But I know that’s not the case with you, because you’ve spoken to me before about your interest in the Second World War.

MC: There’s something really special about making a sequel to your own game, a world you’ve created with characters you’ve invented, and we were really proud of Advanced Warfare. But we felt like we had tied that story up really nicely at the end… and Advanced Warfare was really born from listening to fans. They demanded innovation and wanted something new, and similarly three years ago we were listening to fans about this opportunity to return to where the franchise began.

It felt right for us. We’d done a modern game, we’d done an advanced game, and the opportunity to take a beloved franchise back to its roots, where it hadn’t been in nearly a decade – it was a real honour. So while we were super-invested in the Advanced Warfare world, the chance to take it back to World War II… it was something that we were really excited about.

GC: I remember last time we spoke you were talking even then about what a fan you were of Band of Brothers…

MC: [laughs] Did you raise that? Was that in your article?

GC: Yeah, that was me. We were talking about it… I think it was at the review event for Advanced Warfare.

MC: I think it was!

GC: Was that the germination of the idea? That must’ve been late 2014…

MC: I’m a huge fan of Call Of Day. I was a fan before I was a developer. And so my first moments with the franchise always began with where it began, in World War II. I think we’re both fans of all kinds of entertainment, and there are great examples of things like Black Hawk Down – which is a film I really value – and Band of Brothers, which I think is remarkable.

So at that time you start to begin to think about what you’d like to do next. And I’m sure, consciously or sub-consciously, the idea to take it back to its roots, and to a place where Saving Private Ryan hadn’t been for 20 years, may have been on our minds.

We were also excited, and very passionate, about Advanced Warfare, so I don’t know exactly when the germination of the idea began. And it’s always a discussion with Activision, and we’re a studio that always believes the team is brought in… but yeah that was two and a half years ago.

GC: I know…

Call Of Duty: WWII – no jetpacks allowed

MC: Where’d that time go? [laughs] And that’s a long time, right? As you know, you create entertainment for your article, you write in your work… three years is a long time to be working on anything.

GC: For me, the write-up at least is rarely more than a few hours of my day, so the idea of doing anything for that length of time is almost incomprehensible. [laughs]

MC: It can seem crazy.

GC: When I have to write a bad review I do feel bad about it. I do always think about how long the team has been working on the game, and how I’m tearing it apart in just a few hundred words.

MC: I appreciate that. Look, you don’t always make the right decisions 100% of the time. But from what I know – I’ve been working for almost 20 years now – I’ve yet to meet a developer who didn’t put their whole heart and soul into what they were doing. It means sacrifice, time away from friends and family. You give it 100%. That’s true of any developer I’ve ever met.

GC: That’s why I enjoy doing interviews, you get to talk to developers and they’re always super enthusiastic and hopeful. Well, most of them anyway.

MC: [laughs] I’m sure it’s the same when you do your writing. You sit down and you want to do your best work. Whether or not it’s a complimentary review or a negative review, or an op-ed piece I’m sure you never sit down and say, ‘Hey, I’m just gonna bang this thing out’.

GC: Well no, because I enjoy writing and thinking about games in this way. I think there at least is a connection between journalists and game developers: you wouldn’t be doing these crazy hours unless you enjoyed it.

MC: Absolutely. Somebody asked me, because I was wandering the floor yesterday talking to some of the fans, and they said, ‘It’s just so great to see you engaging with fans’. And they said, ‘Why do we do this?’ And the answer is I love my job. If fans don’t love what you do then you shouldn’t be doing it. If you don’t love what you’re doing for fans, you shouldn’t be doing it.

I feel so thankful, and so honoured, to be able to do this for a living because this is the most fun you can have. And these events are the chance to meet everyone. It’s really special, it really is.

GC: Some devs hate doing publicity, and some journalists complain about having to go E3, but I love it. The chance to see everything and speak to everyone, there’s nothing else like it.

MC: I feel the same way. I would love to be able to go a Pixar convention and listen to the creators of the Pixar films. I’ve been on the record many times saying Pixar was one of the entertainment companies I admire the most. And so to have journalists and fans and developers all coming together to celebrate this industry – I love this!

GC: So, I remember the first time I played Call Of Duty; it was the first one on PC and that was quite revelatory to me. I remember feeling shell-shocked at the intensity and relentlessness of the action. But then almost guilty, that I was sitting there playing something for entertainment that was a simulation of the worst thing that ever happened to these guys in real-life. For a long time I didn’t know what to really think about it all. Is that the kind of reaction you want to provoke with this new game?

MC: I believe interactive entertainment is art. I do. As a creator of art you want to touch people. Art really resonates, whether it’s film, books, or music… to me the greatest example of art is something that emotionally moves you. We’ve certainly seen that in linear media like movies and TV. There are moments… you referenced my appreciation for Band of Brothers. There’s an episode called Why We Fight, do you know that?

GC: You were complaining last time that I’d never seen the show…

MC: You still haven’t seen it?!

GC: I probably haven’t watched any scripted TV since last time we met!

MC: Okay, I’m gonna buy you a copy of that on Blu-ray. [laughs]

GC: It’s not disinterest, I just don’t have the time.

MC: Why We Fight is an episode that touches, in a very respectful way, on the true darkness and atrocities of the conflict. And to me it’s one of those moments where a piece of art is also a piece of entertainment that balances the authenticity of the time and the conflict with the respect needed to honour the sacrifice of those that perished in the war.

And so, when I think about what we wanna do, it’s that we want to create a piece of entertainment, certainly. And the legacy of Call Of Duty is we have these three very disparate modes. We can do things in Zombies that’s true entertainment, it’s fantastical. And multiplayer really is social and competitive and visceral, but it’s not meant to be an authentic simulation.

But the campaign, while entertainment – and we want it to be fun for fans – this backdrop, this canvas of World War II and this conflict and this flexion point in human history, it’s the most powerful opportunity for us to really create art. To move you as a player. And I’m really proud of what we’ve done there.

GC: I’ve always though the potential for video games to put you in someone’s shoes is so grossly underexploited. It’s so rarely done, the only shoes you’re ever put into are Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

MC: That’s true, that’s true.

GC: Games have the ability to literally change your perspective, and yet it’s so rarely done.

MC: That’s what I love about Call Of Duty, and the World War II era. World War II is really about the greater good and the uncommon man. It wasn’t about a Tier 1 soldier of the future, a super-soldier – the singular soldier who can do anything in any scenario. It was very much about the reliance on camaraderie in the squad. And the last true good versus evil conflict. And that’s really resonated with us.

Call Of Duty: WWII – a serious shooter

GC: I was interested to see earlier in the year, that one of the first details you talked about was how the game would portray the segregation and racism towards black soldiers from other Americans. As it happens my sister, who’s a history teacher, did a study on how they were treated when stationed in the UK, and that’s not a subject most films touch on – let alone a video game.

MC: You know, you follow a squad of the 1st Infantry, which is an American squad – but this isn’t an American story, this is an Allied story. This is a story of the Allied forces coming together to really push back the German war machine. So you’ll work with the British; you’ll work with the French Resistance, including a strong female role; and you will encounter squads that are African American. And the sensibilities of geopolitics in 1940 were very different than they are today.

The way that race and gender were treated, and top of that all of the atrocities of the Nazi regime… it’s something that we’ve really taken a lot of time to balance. We want to be authentic and respectful, we want to be a piece of entertainment and also not shy away from what really happened. They say war brings out the best and the worst, and it was important for us that you’ll see that in the game from all sides.

GC: The modern Call Of Duty games have always been very much boys’ own adventures, happy to give the impression that war is actually kind of fun. But that’s not a position you can take with World War II. Do you think your game has a special relevance at the moment, with the rise of right wing politics in many places in the world? Ironically, creating a political map that’s almost the inverse of how it was in the 1940s.

MC: We have an amazing historian working with us on the game called Martin Morgan. He was actually the gentleman who transcribed Ambrose’s stories for Band of Brothers. And he has been incredibly critical for us in ensuring the authenticity of the time. He’s literally taken us in the footsteps of the war, we’ve gone to the Rhine, we’ve gone to Luxembourg, Belgium, we’ve stood in foxholes … he’s been great at explaining what happened at the time and why it happened.

He’s been really important, and he’s opened our eyes to a lot that happened in terms of what led the world to that brink of tyranny, and what happened after. So I’m really thankful for his help in making sure that we tell the story, because for maybe the first time in a long while people will have the opportunity to explore World War II in an action game.

We tell it so this sort of thing can’t happen again. I think profoundly we tell it because the men and women that sacrificed themselves at that time, they’re not here to tell it for themselves.

GC: The most interesting, and frightening, documentary about the war I ever saw was a BBC show called The Nazis: A Warning from History, which was filled with testimony, not from soldiers necessarily but ordinary civilians. And you saw how easy it was for all these outrageous viewpoints to become normalised. It wasn’t anything to do with Germans being evil, it was something that could happen to any country at any time.

MC: It’s really interesting, because through Marty and some of our own research… really, what happened with the Third Reich had its roots all the way back to World War I. You look at this arc that happened from the ‘20s to the ‘40s, and so many millions of people died in those two wars. This is a dark moment in history.

As you study and as you research it there’s a weight to the material that really creates a large burden, in a good way, on the studio to be very respectful of the truth of what really happened.

Call Of Duty: WWII – be the band of brothers

GC: I think, not unfairly, many people will be expecting your game to be the usual sort of Michael Bay style action spectacle. But how do you balance that newer style of Call Of Duty with the more realistic older style?

MC: What helps is that we have these three modes: the fantastical Zombies mode and the social and competitive multiplayer experience, that’s not meant to really show the authenticity of the war. It’s purely an action experience.

GC: Is that why there are no swastikas in the level I played?

MC: That’s right. But in the campaign, for us, you’re right, we set out to create this narrative, this squad of common men and women who were really fighting on behalf of a greater good. Some of the stuff that we’ve shown so far is trying to capture the bigger moments of the war, but I can tell you there are scenes in this game, this narrative, that are the most emotionally powerful scenes we’ve ever created. And it comes back to the best and the worst of people.

You know, I found it fascinating… we did this photo study of soldiers, these 19 and 20-year-old soldiers, that were deploying in ’44 for the invasion of Normandy. And you see these pictures of the same soldiers a year later and it looks like they’ve aged a decade.

Within that year they did and saw so much in incredibly hostile conditions – the winters, the Battle of the Bulge – so there’s real power behind the story. There are moments that I think will really pull on your heart and maybe sear into your brain when you see the sacrifices and accomplishments of the soldiers.

GC: Will this still be an essentially linear experience, like the other games? And will there still be attempts to recreate All Ghilled Up, with sections where you’re following along someone else and doing what they say? The classic Call Of Duty experience, in other words.

MC: We really wanted to have you come to know and care about, and be invested in, your squad. So you will follow the infantry. You will play as Daniels and share his experience. Now, because World War II wasn’t about Tier 1 super-soldiers, who have access to all the gear and intel possible, we do have you seeing the conflict through a couple of different perspectives. Including Rousseau, which is the strong female French Resistance leader.

You’ll experience success, you’ll experience loss. We wanted to give you agency as a player, but we wanted to tell our story and have you follow that narrative with us.

Now, we’ve made some changes, where we’ve taken out the auto-generating health system to really make you feel vulnerable all of the time. And we have squad abilities, where your squad mates help you out with ammo and the medics are very important.

So there are moments where there is agency and dynamic sort of things that change based on who you’re with within your squad, which we think is really powerful. But you’re largely following your squad and experiencing this three-act narrative we’ve constructed.

GC: Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

MC: No problem, it’s good to see you, man. I’m sure we’ll see you again later in the year.